Sunday, February 17, 2013

Geologists? Who Needs Them?

Having taken a while to cogitate, the brilliant Iain Duncan Smith has responded to the court of appeal's judgement on using the unemployed as a means of getting the taxpayer to subsidise private companies. Duncan Smith had a sneer at people who think they should be given information just because they've got a degree, ordering them to contrast shelf-stackers with geologists and ask themselves who is more important. Geologists, as we know, are the sort of people who tend to bring up objections to nice, harmless activities like fracking; much as historians tend to object to the Gove-Ferguson™ version of our island's story, and doctors tend to object to the butchery of the NHS, and lawyers tend to object to the foam-flecked rantings of the Home Secretary and the Minister for Justice and Heterosexual Hostelry. Is there a pattern here, perhaps? Duncan Smith himself, of course, is notable for being the Conservative leader who was sacked for being too dim for the Stupid Party and too repulsive for the Nasty Party; now, as a functionary of the former party of law and order, he has decreed that when he comes into conflict with the law, the law must be "rubbish".